‘Steady on,’ Baz mutters, pulling on my arm as my foot starts towards an open one full of people. Finally a set of doors yawns open, empty. We shuffle forward in silence, floating upward with a click and a chime. The female guard groans as there’s another chime, except the doors are still closed in front of us. I stumble as I turn to see the back side of the lift opening into a dark passageway, facing another, smaller lift door.

‘Down the rabbit hole, is it?’ she grumbles, spinning me round. The second lift’s much smaller and clunkier, jolting down rather than up, so deep we must be underground. We keep moving for so long I start to wonder if we’re going sideways. I only know we’ve arrived when the doors open without warning after a particularly solid jolt.

‘Where are we?’ I ask, stepping out into a low-ceilinged, windowless corridor.

‘Thought you had an appointment,’ Baz mumbles, grabbing my arm, the female guard grumbling at my other side. I keep quiet as we walk and turn, searching the endless greyish walls and plastic floor for anything that might remind me how to get out again. Finally, we stop in front of a door at the end of the passage, which Baz opens with a thumbprint.

‘In you go,’ he says, pushing at the small of my back. I peer into the room, if you can even call it that. Dark, airless, no more than four feet square, another door set into the opposite wall.

‘No way,’ I say, bracing myself between them. I’ve been in enough of these to know what happens when they lock the door behind you. A whole lot of nothing for a whole lot of nothing longer. ‘You tell Shacklin to open that other door and I’ll go…’

The female guard sneers as Baz’s hand closes round my arm.

‘Bit late for all that now, isn’t it?’ she drawls as they lift and fling me across the threshold. I land in a heap as the door closes on their laughter, taking most of the light left in the room with it.171

I sit, too stunned to do anything except blink. All I can make out in the half-light are the doors, embedded in the walls like the panels of lift doors, except I’m not moving and there aren’t any buttons. One’s behind me, where I came in. One in front of me, where I suppose I’ll get out. Or will I go backward? I squint up at the ceiling. There is a small camera pointed directly at me.

‘Who are you?’ I jump as a voice echoes round the tiny room. There’s a whirr as the camera suddenly swivels and glows red.

‘Pegasus,’ I say, staring up at it like an ember in the dark. ‘Pegasus?’ There’s a click and the red light goes out.